6 Tips to Keep Morale High while Working Remote
Companies everywhere, including many of our clients are implementing remote work practices for the first time. As organizations focus on getting those able to do their jobs remotely, many are seeing productivity and efficiency taking a nosedive.
Tarmac has been a distributed company since our inception in 2010 and believes the key to recovering that productivity is to keep morale amongst your remote working teams high.
Here are 6 lessons we’ve learned on our own and from observing our clients who are doing it right!
1.When you start working, greet your team. A key tenant of the Tarmac 10 is regular and purposeful communication, and it starts as soon as each member of the team does.
2. Encourage banter. Your team may need to practice communicating with each other, why not make it fun? After a majority of the team has given their morning greeting, one of our client leaders posts a `Question of the Day` to keep the team interacting with each other. A couple examples from this week include:
QOD: What word or saying from the past do you think should make a comeback?
QOD: Would you rather know the history of every object you touched or be able to talk to animals? and why?
QOD: What movie can you watch over and over and still enjoy?
3. Build in time to be a human. When your team is remote, the boss can’t do the desk drop-in, and the water cooler doesn’t exist. Plan for additional minutes to be able to check-in with team mates before getting down to business. Anthony Murphy from Product Coalition compiled some virtual icebreakers to inspire you.
4. Set expectations for communication. Many organizations use a multitude of communication tools such as meetings, desk-drive-bys, hallway conversations, collaboration sessions, email, instant messaging, texting, and likely a combination of tools for each. 🥴🤪This is a great time to become mindful of the power of asynchronous communication, and you’ll see the value of your synchronous communication sky rocket. Twist has written a really comprehensive guide on this topic.
5. Give each other grace. We were really impressed with the company-wide message shared by the president of another client. The message was simply that everyone is adapting to new circumstances where work environments may suddenly include a spouse, partner, children, and/or pets, as well as the responsibility of trying keep them all healthy, and on task. Allow your team members to adjust their work schedule, be forgiving when mini hands or faces pop into video conference backgrounds, and help each other get the job done.
6. Keep improving. We keep learning from companies that like Tarmac have distributed teams. Basecamp, for one, shares their communication guidelines.
We’re hoping some of these practices become engrained and won’t go away once we are able to safely socialize again.
Until then, we’d love to hear from you and what your team is doing to adapt. Comment below or send me an email at chad@tarmac.io
Chad Gillard — Director of Product Management
Chad serves as Director of Product Management for Tarmac. He brings 15 years of experience delivering innovative solutions across multiple sectors, to include higher education, healthcare, fintech and food verticals. Prior to joining Tarmac in January 2020, Chad created product development teams at Matter Supply Company, GoKart Labs, and Midwest Pantry.
Chad has a strong background in product management, lean thinking, and engineering. In addition to launching and leading teams across the US, Chad has also worked in Europe and Asia (Ireland, Italy and Thailand).
Chad lives with his family in Minnesota, is a proud father of three, and perhaps most importantly, is a phenomenal bocce ball player.
About Tarmac
Tarmac designs, builds, scales, and supports exceptional software.
We are technology agnostic and leverage a wide array of modern languages like Ruby, Javascript, Python, and Java. We help our clients deliver higher quality software quicker by relying on our proven software development approach, the “Tarmac 10”.
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